After the Commissioner's three year investigation, which the NFL publicly declared consisted of
review of "over 18,000 documents," interviews of several witnesses, and involved a former US
Attorney hired to opine that the investigation was "thorough and fair," the League provided the
Players Union with less than two hundred pages of documents the Friday before Monday's hearing.
The NFL chose not to identify who created the documents, when they were created, the purpose of
creating them, where the documents were obtained, or whether the players had even seen these
documents. In addition to denying the Players Union's request for a three day continuance to learn
the answers to these questions, the Commissioner nonetheless informed the players that the League
will not offer any witness at the hearing who created the documents.

The following is what the Players Union was able to discover during the course of Father's Day
weekend:

1. Despite the length of the Commissioner's investigation and the experience of those involved,
the fact is that the slides provided by the NFL, and relied upon as a basis for discipline, were
never shown to any Saints coaches for explanation by NFL Investigators.
2. Based upon the Players Union's limited investigation and interviews of relevant personnel
(including current and former Saints players, coaches, and individuals who attended all
defensive meetings), we have been able to provide these individuals' explanations of several of
the relevant slides upon which the Commissioner admittedly based his discipline on the
players and presumably the coaches.
3. The interviews of the individuals who were actually present at the defensive meetings when
Coach Williams used the inflammatory words (the words that the League has made the focus
of its public campaign) have enabled the Players Union to determine that Coach Williams'
words were motivational, not literal.
4. The Players Union has learned that Mike Ornstein told the NFL and the Commissioner
personally that:
a. He never sent the email directly to Coach Sean Payton (as reported by the media and
leaked by the NFL);
b. He never intended the email to be a "bounty" on any NFL Player; and
c. He advised the Commissioner of a message from Gregg Williams indicating that the
Saints never took the email as a "bounty" on any player.
5. The NFL has never informed the players of any of this exculpatory or mitigating evidence.
All of the documents forming the basis of the Commissioner's discipline have been provided and
explanations are contained in the following materials.